President Biden will travel to North and South Carolina and Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Georgia on Wednesday to scan damage from Hurricane Helene and greet first responders.
Mr. Biden will take an aerial tour of western North Carolina, a hard-hit part of the Southeast. Whole neighborhoods were washed out, and some residents can’t be accessed or contacted because of road impairment and cellphone outages.
The White House also said Mr. Biden will visit the state emergency center in Raleigh and “engage with first responders and state and local officials in South Carolina en route to North Carolina.”
“We have to jumpstart this recovery process,” Mr. Biden said Tuesday at the White House. “People are scared to death.”
He said recovery efforts will likely cost “billions of dollars.”
Ms. Harris will head to Augusta, Georgia, to get an update on recovery efforts.
The vice president, who also is the Democratic presidential nominee and locked in a tighht race with Republican Donald Trump, will look at the damage and receive an on-the-ground briefing in Georgia about recovery efforts.
She “will also provide updates on federal actions that are being taken to support emergency response and recovery efforts in Georgia and several other states throughout the Southeast,” the White House said.
Ms. Harris also plans to visit North Carolina “in the coming days,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
The storm made landfall in Florida last week and ripped through the Southeast, killing at least 130 people along a 500-mile path. Hundreds more are missing.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the government is still conducting search and rescue operations in many areas.
The administration does not think a strike by dock workers will affect its ability to get supplies to affected areas because supplies were “pre-positioned” in states hit by the storm, Ms. Jean-Pierre said.
The president said Monday he wanted to visit battered areas as soon as possible but didn’t want his presence to disrupt recovery efforts.
Vice President Kamala Harris also said she planned to visit when appropriate.
The recovery is a key test for the Biden-Harris administration in a campaign year. Two hard-hit states, North Carolina and Georgia, are considered must-win states for former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee, and Ms. Harris, the Democratic nominee.
Ms. Harris visited FEMA headquarters in Washington to thank workers on Monday, and Mr. Trump visited Valdosta, Georgia, to bring supplies and discuss the recovery.
Mr. Trump suggested state leaders were having a hard time reaching Mr. Biden, though the White House and the leaders themselves said that wasn’t the case.
Elsewhere, Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina released a photograph of her working the phones to guide recovery efforts.
“I’m working around the clock to help get the High Country back on its feet, to make sure western North Carolina is not forgotten, and to help those who need assistance,” Ms. Foxx, a Republican whose district covers parts of northwestern North Carolina, wrote on X. “We have a lot of work to do, and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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